Selection of films by Boris Labbé

Boris Labbé

Friday 26 May

20:00 – 21:30

CHF 12.- / 8.-

Il(s) tourne(nt) en rond is a reinterpretation of the painting Kermesse with Theater and Procession by Pieter Bruegel the Younger. After the digital deletion of the characters present in the original painting, new characters were reanimated inside this medieval scene. This animated painting functions as a self-portrait; all the characters are clones of the author, continually replaying scenes from the original painting, locked in their endless cycles. Here, inside the painting, characters are constantly eating, drinking, fighting, crying, playing, running, walking, etc.

Kyrielle [2011, 10 min]

The French word "Kyrielle" means "long series of various things". Besides, "le jeu des kyrielles" is a word game presented as a children song, taking as first syllable the last syllable of the previous phrase as in the famous French nursery rhyme : Marabout, Bout de ficelle, Selle de Cheval, etc. The repeating rhythms and cycles have a hypnotic quality, and encourage the viewer’s eye to playfully wonder and explore different shapes. The piece was built with 285 watercolors, letting the drawing gradually distort as the result of improvised movements. The animated shapes turn into a complex symmetric abstraction, before returning to the minimalist aesthetics of the original white background. The final piece, built like a palindrome, was then digitally composed on a computer. Kyrielle was inspired, among others, from works like Tango by filmmaker Zbigniew Rybczynski, or the painting Children's Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

A trip towards abstraction, as an hypothesis on how mountains might have been formed.

Rhizome [2015, 12 min]

From the infinitely small to the infinitely big, everything in the universe is tightly connected, when interacting, when rebuilding, in a combination of movements in perpetual metamorphosis.

Boris Labbé

FR

Originally an illustrator, Boris Labbé has been developing an experimental approach to animated films over the past seven years. His projects tend to explore outside the spatio-temporal scheme imposed by classic cinema, evolving towards video installation systems which include last century’s major technology revolutions mixed with last-generation digital technologies. His videos all use palingenesis as a label, a notion which calls for loops and regeneration: a cyclical return of the same events, a regular reappearance of ancestral types, an eternal going back to life.